Re: Font Smoothing and CSS

>Use a CSS property to put font smoothing into a Web page.
>
>Example:
>
>H1 	{font-smoothing: on,4}
>
>This would make all H1 tags in the page have font smoothing on it, and 4 is
>the number of "grays" to use.
>
>This would eliminate the need for creating images when you want anti-alised
>text. Also, say you have a background image on your page. You want to put
>some
>anti-alised text on it. You would probably use a transparent GIF, so the
>background shows through. Since GIFs only support 216 colors, then your image
>will be distorted. And you can't use a JPEG, because it is not transparent.

Well, you can't use a transparent GIF either. To anti-alias an image or a piece
of text, you have to know the background. When you anti-alias, you make the
pixels around the edge have some colour in between that of the letter and that
of the background. If you put an anti-aliased image on a multicolored
background,
those pixels will stand out from the background and look very peculiar.

But the proposal is interesting, since it addresses an existing need. I myself
use anti-aliased text on pages I design - they look much more appealing
that way.

>This idea might not work on all machines, since some users are using
>Microsoft
>Plus! for example, with the font smoothing in it turned on. But, what if, in
>Internet
>Explorer and Netscape, when the smoothing property was recognized in a page,
>the browser would check the user's machine, to see if they have font
>smoothing
>already turned on, and, if they did, to ignore whatever was in the Web page,
>but, if it was not turned on, then to use it? You wouldn't have to restart
>Windows to put font smoothing on, I can put font smoothing on right now
>without having to restart. The 256 colors could be a problem though-If the
>browser detected less than 256 colors, then the font smoothing could be
>turned
>off.


Carl Johan Berglund <carl.johan.berglund@adverb.se>
Adverb Information, http://www.adverb.se

Received on Monday, 8 September 1997 16:49:26 UTC